Superstars

Recently, Les and I have been very busy with some extra jobs we have taken on around Huangshi. One thing we have learned about ourselves is that we can't say NO!  haha We think the people of Huangshi have realized this as well and now target only the two of us for tutoring/teaching jobs because they know we are the foreigners who agree to anything!  

One of the jobs we recently had was to judge an English competition at a school in Yangxin.  Yangxin is a village on the outskirts of Huangshi, about an hour and half away.  Our school basically volunteered us to judge the competition, so we did it.

Honestly, we were made to feel like celebs all day.  We were picked up in a very nice car and driven to the village with our waiban Diana, one of our headmasters and his daughter.  They fed us breakfast and then took us to the school.  We were told the competition was very small with 15 students, so when we walked in to a huge auditorium filled with hundreds of students we were a little shocked!  Most of the village students had never seen a foreigner before, so when we walked in they clapped and cheered for us.  

We then judged the competition, which I have to say the students did an excellent job speaking English.  Then they got us to award all of the students with certificates.  Oh wait and right when we thought we were done, they told us we were giving the closing speech for the competition.  WHAT???  Oh man!  So Les and I headed onto the stage, mics in hand, to give a speech.  We thought we were done, but no...it was now question and answer time!  Students came up and asked us questions mainly about how to improve their English, can they take a photo with us, do we have boyfriends, all the usuals etc.  The last student asked if we had a QQ number (instant messaging used in China),  I said yes and immediately regretted my response!  Next thing we knew we were surrounded by hundreds of students, signing pieces of paper with our name and QQ numbers.  They had their phones out taking pics of us and everything!  It was insane and a definite celeb moment! I wish I had a pic of the mob surrounding us!  At the end, Diana looked at Les and said, "Ready to go Superstar!"  haha We really were Superstars that day!

A dance during one of the intermissions at the competition to the song "Lovey Dovey"!

The contestants at the end of the competition.

One of the contestants giving her speech!

 The judges table!

During the autograph/picture taking session.  Did I mention we had to get up at 6:30am and we were looking rough!

 Lunch with the teachers from the school.  Diana is sitting next to me and Zhu Ming next to Les.  They were our bodyguards for the day. haha I'm sort of kidding, but not really!